A new year, a new YEN PLUS!

Posted December 15, 2008 by

Hitting stores this week, it’s the first YEN PLUS of the new year! This month, Sumomomo’s Momoko and the gang from One Fine Day are featured, along with all your other favorites. This is also Higurashi’s final appearance in the pages of YEN PLUS, so make sure your check it out! Keep sending us your fan art and feedback! And HAPPY HOLIDAYS from all of us at Yen!

62 Comments

Well Yenplus, seems there is a mix on this issue. (I recently got the new one~) I’m not complaing what you did was good or bad, I’m just going to say you may want to consider somethings. Its true, if a manga is popular than you should release it quicker however it seems Higurashi was one of your gimmick mangas for yen plus. Maybe we’ll see better things in the future but for now… if it’s not being released like every month… it’ll be hard to please fans (3 months is definitely good but still a monthly magazine doesn’t make it feel so long)

Also, I do in fact hate that you made a gimmick for needing to buy the maximum ride manga. Though this was probably some marketing strategy? maybe to test out something? I dunno… hell it could just be you needed more space this month, but it too was a winner and makes the fans feel forced to buy not only a subscription to keep up but also the 1st volume. I will still buy it because I like a lot of series (I’m more or less surprised since its hard to find in stores…)

Hopefully I will see better results in march? or maybe april/may. And also! when is that amateur contest going to happen? ^_^

I stopped buying the manga anthology Shojo Beat because of Viz Media’s policy of only publishing series for a limited time as a kind of “advertisement” for the graphic novels.

This is a plea to Yen Press: Please do not fall into that same pattern! Yen Plus is a fantastic magazine and the first manga anthology since Shonen Jump that I think has the power to succeed. I understand the explanation you have given for dropping Higurashi, but I hope that the same fate does not also befall either of the serials being brought in to replace it.

For the same reason, I am very upset by your announcement that Yen Plus will be skipping over a chapter of Maximum Ride, calling it a “graphic novel exclusive.” I felt a little insulted by that. We have already paid for the magazine and all the chapters in it, yet you construct a ploy to get us to buy a collection of the same chapters we already own just to get the one you won’t publish? That is a cheap trick that is beneath such a fan-oriented company such as yourselves.

That’s it for constructive criticism. I simply love Yen Plus so much that I felt I had to let you know when I feel you have damaged to reputation of your magazine. Though I do have two other suggestions/requests:

Anthologies should also contain articles – in this case cultural pieces would be great. For example: a companion to Sarasah that helps explain all the confusing historical references regarding ancient Korea, or an article about kendo for Bamboo Blade.

Has Yen Press ever considered publishing light novels? Yen Plus would be a great place to either preview one or serialize, just like magazines in Japan do.

Thanks for your feedback! And in response to your question about light novels, Yen Press has announced two novel series: Kieli and Spice and Wolf. The first volume of Kieli is set to release in July, and Spice and Wolf is tentatively scheduled for December!

I went to my bookstore looking for a newish Shonen Jump, but found Yen’s February instead. Always a nice surprise, I wasn’t expected to see it out already.

As for the whole Higurashi thing. It really is a long series. And quite frankly the chapter after the next one is so freaking gruesome that I don’t know if it would bode well for whatever traget demographic Yen is aimed at. I got so hooked on Higurashi that I looked for and found the anime hiding in a bush out in the desert…

Seriously though, if the end of the first manga arc is anything like the fourth episode of the manga…*shudder*

What I would really like to know is which series will end soon. Also I belive that the series that will end soon will be those that are popular enough to make it big in tankoban format. That means those that are less popular will be fodder for us to feed on to fuel the magazine. While the best manga will most likely be sent away from the magazine and will make their debut. We will then have to pay for the book if we want to continue it. They should just keep the magazine intact, and provide for more chapters per magazine through more advertisement. They only advertise Yen press and a few other books that are not really manga. If they advertised Anime, manga, and other anime related products they could afford to make it phone book size.

Uhwahh! Higurashi is leaving? ;^; It’s my most favorite anime/manga/video game series of all time! But I hope that the volumes will be coming out even sooner now! I being as big a nerd as I am have already marked the calendars. I haven’t gotten the chance to thank you for bringing the manga to america yet. I must say I lost the ability to speak when I was browsing through you’re magazine and saw it there. Thank you so much, and I’m a dedicated fan of Yen+ all the same! Especially that Soul Eater!